Senator Warner is a special
friend. He has introduced me to the United States Senate for confirmation four
times. The first time was more than 20 years ago. And that dates us both. He is
a great Virginian, a great American, and we will certainly all miss him when he
brings his remarkable career in public service to a close next year.

I want to thank Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, one of the most
distinguished jurists and public servants in America, for inviting me today. It
was Justice O’Connor who administered my oath as -- of office as Director of Central
Intelligence in 1991. And last year we served together on the
Baker-Hamilton
Commission. Little did I know that my sojourn to Iraq a little over a year ago
with that group would be the first of a number of visits for me.

Justice O’Connor and I share something else in common -- a love
of the College of William & Mary, where she is currently the chancellor. And
of course, it was a special pleasure to see her four months ago when I had the
honor of giving the commencement address at my alma mater. Attending college in
here Williamsburg shaped my love of history and my belief that public service is
a vital component of a working democracy -- and of a meaningful life.

This setting is fitting for my topic today: a “realist’s” view
of promoting democracy abroad.

I had quite a reputation as a pessimist when I was in the
intelligence business. A journalist once described me as the
Eeyore of national
security -- able to find the darkest cloud in any silver lining. I used to joke
that when an intelligence officer smelled the flowers, he’d look around for the
coffin. Today, as one looks around the world -- wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an
ambitious and fanatical theocracy in Iran, a nuclear North Korea, terrorism, and
more -- there would seem to be ample grounds to be gloomy.

But there is a different perspective if we step back and look at
the world through a wider lens -- a perspective that shows a dramatic growth in
human freedom and democracy in just the time since this fall’s college freshmen
were born. Since 1989, hundreds of millions of people -- from Eastern and
Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, and
elsewhere -- have been liberated. They have left the darkness of despotism
and walked into the bright sunshine of freedom.

Many have seized the opportunity, and freedom has prospered and
strengthened; others, liberated from the yoke of tyrannical ideologies or
dictators, continue to struggle to fully realize the dream. At no time in
history, though, has freedom come to so many in so short a time. And in every
case, the United States, overtly or covertly, in large ways or small, played a
role in their liberation.

Still, we Americans continue to wrestle with the appropriate
role this country should play in advancing freedom and democracy in the world.
It was a source of friction through the entire Cold War. In truth, it has been
a persistent question for this country throughout our history: How should we
incorporate America’s democratic ideals and aspirations into our relations with
the rest of the world? And in particular, when to and whether to try to change
the way other nations govern themselves? Should America’s mission be to make the
world “safe for democracy,” as Woodrow Wilson said, or, in the words of John
Quincy Adams, should America be “the well-wisher of freedom and independence of
all” but the “champion and vindicator only of our own”?

During my time today, I’d like to put this question and its
associated debates in some historical context -- a context I hope might help
inform the difficult policy choices our nation faces today.

Let me speak first to geography -- this place we are in.

It is a strange quirk of history that a backwoods outpost in an
unexplored corner of America would hold in it the seeds of a global movement
toward liberty and self-governance -- toward the democratic institutions that
underpin the free nations of the world and give hope to countless people in many
others.

So much of what defines America first took root here in Virginia
along the banks of the
James River. When you think about it, the initial impetus
for these institutions owed as much to the struggle for survival as anything
else. The challenges were myriad: along with disease, hunger, and war, the
settlers faced no small number of divisions and discord. Four hundred years
removed from those early days, it is all too easy to forget about these stormy
beginnings.

The revolution that brought about this nation was similarly
chaotic. As my distinguished William and Mary classmate, the historian Joe
Ellis, wrote in his book, Founding Brothers,

No one present at the
start knew how it would turn out in the end. What in retrospect has the look of
a foreordained unfolding of God’s will was in reality an improvisational affair
in which sheer chance, pure luck -- both good and bad -- and specific decisions
made in the crucible of specific military and political crises determined the
outcome.

Ellis further wrote,

The real drama of the American Revolution … was its
inherent messiness. This … exciting but terrifying sense that all the major
players had at the time -- namely, that they were making it up as they went
along, improvising on the edge of catastrophe.

We would do well to be mindful
of the turbulence of our own early history as we contemplate the challenges
facing contemporary fledgling democracies struggling to find their footing.

When I retired from government in 1993, it seemed that the
success and spread of democracy was inexorable, a foregone conclusion -- that
with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the evolution of political systems had
reached, in the words of one scholar at the time, the “end of history.” But the
relative calm in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War served only to mask new
threats to the security of democratic nations: ethnic conflicts, new genocides,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- especially by rogue states
-- and, above all, a new, more formidable, and more malignant form of terrorism
embraced by Islamic extremists.

These new threats, and in particular, the conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the wider challenge of dealing with radical jihadist movements
since September 11th, once again have people talking about the
competing impulses in U.S. foreign policy: realism versus idealism, freedom
versus security, values versus interests.

This is not a new debate. Not long after winning our own
independence, the United States was faced with how to respond to the French Revolution
--
an issue that consumed the politics of the country in the 1790s. The issue
was whether to support the revolutionary government and its war against an
alliance of European monarchies led by Great Britain. To many, like Thomas
Jefferson, the French Revolution, with its stated ideals of liberty, equality,
and fraternity, seemed a natural successor to our own. Jefferson wrote that
“this ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it
will roll round the globe.”

John Adams and the Federalists, however, were just as adamantly
opposed. They were appalled by the revolution’s excesses and feared the spread
of violent French radicalism to our shores. In fact, they accused the Jeffersonians of being “pimps of France,” who “represented cutthroats who walk
in rags.” The Federalists mocked Jefferson for his rhetoric and defense of freedom
and equality across the Atlantic while he continued to own slaves. Adams and
Alexander Hamilton were, in turn, accused of being "crypto-monarchists."

It was left to President George Washington to resolve the
matter. He had said that: “My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever,
in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.” But
the European wars and, in particular, our estrangement from the British, had
begun to disrupt the lives of ordinary Americans by impeding trade and causing
riots and refugees. Washington, understanding the fragility of America’s
position at the time, adopted a neutrality policy toward France and would go on
to make a peace treaty with Great Britain -- sparking massive protests and
accusations of selling out the spirit of 1776.

Consider the great historic irony: The United States had
recently broken free of the British monarchy only with the help of an absolutist
French king. And yet when France itself turned in the direction of popular rule and
was confronted by Europe’s monarchies, the United States took a pass and made
amends with our old British foe.

In short, from our earliest days, America’s leaders have
struggled with “realistic” versus “idealistic” approaches to the international
challenges facing us. The most successful leaders, starting with Washington,
have steadfastly encouraged the spread of liberty, democracy, and human
rights. At the same time, however, they have fashioned policies blending
different approaches with different emphases in different places at different
times.

Over the last century, we have allied with tyrants to defeat
other tyrants. We have sustained diplomatic relations with governments even as
we supported those attempting their overthrow.

We have at times made human rights the centerpiece of our
national strategy even as we did business with some of the worst violators of
human rights. We have worked with authoritarian governments to advance our own
security interests even while urging them to reform.

We have used our military to eliminate governments seen as a
threat to our national security, to undo aggression, to end ethnic slaughter,
and to prevent chaos. In recent times, we have done this in Grenada, Panama,
Kuwait, the Balkans, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the process, we have
brought the possibility of democracy and freedom to tens of millions more who
had been oppressed or were suffering.

To win and protect our own freedom, the United States has made
common cause with countries that were far from free -- from
Louis XVI, to one of
history’s true monsters, Joseph Stalin. Without the one there is no American
independence. Without the other, there is no end to the
Third Reich. It is neither
hypocrisy nor cynicism to believe fervently in freedom while adopting different
approaches to advancing freedom at different times along the way -- including
temporarily making common cause with despots to defeat greater or more urgent
threats to our freedom or our interests.

The consuming goal of most of my professional life was
containing the threat of the Soviet Union and seeing a Europe made whole and
free. For most of the Cold War, the ideal surely seemed distant, even
unreachable. One prominent columnist wrote in Time magazine in 1982: “It would be wishful thinking to predict that international Communism
someday will either self-destruct or so exhaust itself.”

During that struggle, as for most of our history, inspiring
presidential rhetoric about freedom, along with many firm stands for human
rights and self-determination, had to coexist with often grubby compromises and
marriages of convenience that were necessary to stave off the Evil Empire.

But the Western democracies -- joined as the
Atlantic Alliance
--
came together to get the big things right. The democracies’ shared belief in
political and economic freedom and religious toleration was the glue that held us
fast despite the many quarrels along the way.

President Bush said in his second inaugural address, “[I]t is
the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic
movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal
of ending tyranny in our world.”

When we discuss openly our desire for democratic values to take
hold across the globe, we are describing a world that may be many years or
decades off. Though achievement of the ideal may be limited by time, space,
resources, or human nature, we must not allow ourselves to discard or disparage
the ideal itself. It is vital that we speak out about what we believe and let
the world know where we stand. It is vital that we give hope and aid to those
who seek freedom.

I still remember working on the advance team for President Ford
when he attended the Helsinki conference in 1975. Many critics were opposed to
America’s participation, since they believed
the accords did little but
ratify the Soviet Union’s takings in Eastern and Central Europe. The treaty’s
provisions on human rights were disparaged as little more than window
dressing. However, the conference and the treaty represent another of history’s
ironies. The Soviets demanded the conference for decades,
finally got it, and it
helped destroy them from the inside. We “realists” opposed holding the
conference for decades, attended grudgingly. We were wrong, for the meeting
played a key role in our winning the Cold War.

Why? Because the human-rights provisions of the treaty made a
moral statement whose significance was not lost on the dissidents behind the
Iron Curtain. Helsinki became a spur to action, a rallying cry to fight tyranny
from within and plant democracy in its place.
Vaclav Havel later said that the accords were a “shield, a
chance to resist coercion and make it more difficult for the forces of coercion
to retaliate.” Lech Walesa
called it a turning point “on the road to change in
Gdansk.”

President Carter’s promotion of the spirit of Helsinki -- his
elevation of human rights -- for the first time in the Cold War denied the Soviet
Union the respect and the legitimacy it craved. Ronald Reagan’s muscular words
--
labeling the U.S.S.R. the “Evil Empire” and demanding that Mr. Gorbachev
tear
down that wall -- combined with his muscular defense policies hastened the
implosion of the Soviet system.

Did these policies reflect hard-edged realism or lofty idealism?
Both, actually. Were they implemented to defend our interests or to spread our
democratic values? Again, both.

An underlying theme of American history is that we are compelled
to defend our security and our interests in ways that, in the long run, lead to
the spread of democratic values and institutions.

Since September 11th, these questions,
contradictions, and dilemmas have taken on new urgency and presented new
challenges for decision-makers, especially in an information age where every
flaw and inconsistency -- in words or deeds -- is highlighted, magnified, and
disseminated around the globe. And, as with the Cold War, every action we take sends a signal
about the depth of our strength and resolve. For our friends and allies, as well
as for our enemies and potential adversaries, our commitment to democratic
values must be matched by actions.

Consider Afghanistan. The democracies of the West and our
partners are united in the desire to see stability and decent governance take
hold in a land that was not only Al Qaeda’s base of operations, but also home to
one of the most oppressive governments in the world. And yet, though there is
little doubt about the justness, necessity, and legitimacy of the Afghanistan
mission, even though we agree that democracy is key to enduring stability there,
many Allies are reluctant to provide the necessary resources and put their men
and women in the line of fire.

Afghanistan is, in a very real sense, a litmus test of whether
an alliance of advanced democracies can still make sacrifices and meet
commitments to advance democracy. It would be a mark of shame on all of us if an
alliance built on the foundation of democratic values were to falter at the very
moment that it tries to lay that foundation for democracy elsewhere -- especially
in a mission that is crucial to our own security.

Likewise, for America to leave Iraq and the Middle East in chaos
would betray and demoralize our allies there and in the region, while
emboldening our more -- most dangerous adversaries. To abandon an Iraq where just two
years ago 12 million people quite literally risked their lives to vote for a
constitutional democracy would be an offense to our interests as well as to our
values, a setback for the cause of freedom as well as the goal of stability.

Americans have never been a patient people. Today, we look at
Russia, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others -- and wonder at their
excruciatingly slow progress toward democratic institutions and the rule of law.

The eminent French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse wrote in
1992:

Reforms, when they go against the political traditions of the centuries,
cannot be imposed in a hurry merely by enshrining them in the law. It takes
time, and generally they are accompanied by violence.

She added:

Reforms that
challenge centuries of social relations based on ... the exclusion of the
majority of society from the political process, are too profound to be readily
accepted by those who have to pay the price of reform, even if they are seen to
be indispensable. Reforms need time to develop ... It is this time [that]
reformers have often lacked.

For more than 60 years, from Germany and Japan to South Korea,
the Balkans, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we and our allies have provided
reformers -- those who seek a free and democratic society -- with time for their
efforts to take hold. We must be realists and recognize that the institutions
that underpin an -- an enduring free society can only take root over time.

It is our country’s tragedy, and our glory, that the tender
shoots of freedom around the world for so many decades have been so often
nourished with American blood. The spread of liberty both manifests our ideals
and protects our interests -- in making the world “safe for democracy,” we are
also the “champion and vindicator” of our own. In reality, Wilson and Adams must
coexist.

Throughout more than two centuries, the United States has made
its share of mistakes. From time to time, we have strayed from our ideals and
have been arrogant in dealing with others. Yet, what has brought us together
with our democratic allies is a shared belief that the future of democracy and
its spread is worth our enduring labors and sacrifices -- reflecting both our
interests and our ideals.

I would like to close by returning to this corner of Virginia. In September 1796, shortly before George Washington left office, he addressed
in his farewell statement an American people who had
passed through the dangerous fires of war and revolution to form a union that
was far from “perfect,” but was a historic accomplishment nonetheless. He told
them:

You
have, in a common cause, fought and triumphed together; the independence and
liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts, of common
dangers, sufferings, and successes.

In this historic place, among old friends and new, let us take
time to reflect on the common causes in which we have fought and triumphed
together -- to protect our own liberty, and to extend its blessings to others. As
we prepare for the challenges ahead, let us never forget that together we will
face common dangers, sufferings, and successes -- but with confidence that,
together, we will continue to protect that tender shoot of liberty first planted
in this place so long ago.